It has been announced by the Wellington City Council, that following on from the demise of the proposal for a Hilton Hotel, there will be an ideas competition for the end of the Outer T on Queens Wharf: currently home to an old tin shed, as I’m sure you all know. The Hilton-to-be, as you will recall, was vanquished by the continued badgering of the combined…
Maximus
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Wellington has long had an ambivalent attitude to alternative means of transport unloved in other cities – we still have trolley buses (long absent from Auckland or Christchurch), we have a cable car (NZ’s and one of the world’s few commuter vertical transporters), and the cops here seem to turn a blind eye to youths driving scooters, sidewinders or skateboards. In most major cities of the…
Maximus
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In the line of an old Abba song, The Winner takes it All, and so it was in the 2008 Wellington Civic Trust awards last night. A friendly Fish-monger sends in this report from the ceremony in Te Papa: The evening started off promptly, no time for drinkies (or Studio Pacific – who missed out on the news they had won the first prize of the…
Maximus
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It has been said that if you want a job done right, then do it yourself. The government seems to have taken this to heart at present, by announcing that a competition for an affordable home has been launched: one possible sub-text being that as they have no way of making housing affordable, perhaps you’d like to design yourself one. Its not to be sneezed at…
Maximus
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After a lengthy (some might say excruciating) out-pouring about her experience of the ridiculous difficulties of building (home renovations and building consents), Joanne Black has recently decide to public pronounce on two more fascinating aspects of the architectural world. Firstly, that the building process is too easy for other people (yes the old “Not-in-my-backyard-especially-when-it’s-Thorndon” syndrome), and secondly, the right for architects to describe their projects using…
Maximus
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In the heart of Wellington’s old Chinatown, namely the narrow low-scale neighbourhood of Haining St, there is one of the few trees that are growing in Te Aro, nestling happily in the lee of an also fairly non-descript warehouse building. Until fairly recently the site was the home of a film unit, a student flat, and parking for assorted businesses, until it was sold and resold…
Maximus
3 Min Read
Another week, another apartment development. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad: sometimes it seems they’re just sent to test the market. There are two more recent apartment buildings being promoted at present: one publicly notified, the other trying to sneak in under the radar. Let’s look at the notified proposal first – as comments are due to the Council by 4 September. This notified consent application…
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